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Our nation's debt is literally indenturing our children to our international debt holders, but most Americans don't care because they are more concerned about the latest saga involving Snooki on Jersey Shore rather than what really matters, our country’s future.

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

The True Unemployment Rate: 36% - HUMAN EVENTS

How would you define “unemployment?” Statistics on
unemployment are bandied around in the media all the time. Changes in
these statistics are hailed as good or bad news for the President, with
varying degrees of emphasis from the news networks, depending on which
party the President belongs to. But what do these statistics truly
measure?

Would you define “unemployment” as measuring
“people who want a job, but can’t get one?” This is, broadly speaking,
the definition embraced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The trick to
making those numbers dance lies in measuring “people who want a
job.” The widely reported U-3 unemployment metric, currently standing
at 8.3 percent, is very aggressive in shaving off people who have not
made recent efforts to find work. It is further distorted by massive
“seasonal adjustments,” which made over a million people vanish into
thin air last month.

This is why the official unemployment rate gets
lower when the American workforce contracts. Workforce contraction is a
very bad thing. People who simply cannot find work, and languish on
unemployment insurance for years, are the last thing a prosperous
country needs… but those people don’t count in the official
unemployment rate. For example, if everyone under the age of 25
abruptly stopped looking for work, it would be an economic disaster, but
the official unemployment rate would go down, because the pool of
people looking for work would get smaller.